Edublogs Teacher Challenges

Free Tools Challenge #8: Go Get Glogged with Glogster

This is the 8th post in the “30 days to using the best of the web’s free tools for educators” series. Be sure to subscribe to the Teacher Challenge blog by RSS, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter to keep up with future challenge posts as they are published.

In today’s education climate it is essential that students acquire the skills to be creators, collaborators, critical thinkers and communicators in the 21st Century. One way to help students achieve those skills is for teachers to offer students a range of digital tools in which to present and share their work. One such tool I have found extremely useful in encouraging students to extend their thinking and be engaged in their learning is through GlogsterEDU.

This post will help you gain the knowledge and skills to use the FREE GlogsterEDU (BASIC) version with students in your classroom or to use the tool to yourself to share information with your students.

Objectives

Create your own digital poster, or ‘glog’ on a topic of your own choice by inserting a range of multimedia.

Find Creative Commons licenced images or videos, or use your own images or videos, for embedding into your glog.

Write a blog post that includes the digital poster, or ‘glog’ you created and share it with the rest of the participants in this Challenge.

Learn how to embed your glog into your blog.

Make comment on glogs created by others in this challenge.

Visit the discussion question for this activity and share your ideas.

Overview of Glogster

GlogsterEDU (the Basic, Free version) is a Web 2.0 tool that allows students, or yourself, to create an online interactive poster/presentation/research on any topic that combines graphics, backgrounds, videos, images, sound, text and hyperlinks. (Please note: adding data (for example, Powerpoint, Word, PDF) to glogs is only available on the Premium, paid version of GlogsterEDU). Importantly the tool encourages students to gather their information, synthesise it, remix it and then create their original presentation. It is an excellent alternative to the traditional classroom poster project by giving it a 21st Century twist (and it’s not messy or bulky). Glogs look absolutely fabulous when students present their work to their peers via the interactive whiteboard. GlogsterEDU is easy to use even for the most novice computer users and, importantly, students love using this program.

GlogsterEDU provides teachers with a safe virtual space where they can manage up to 50 student accounts. Randomly generated usernames and passwords (containing numbers and/or letters) become the students’ logins. However you can, under the manage student accounts tab, edit the nicknames (I suggest first name and maybe initial) and change the passwords. These can then be distributed to students. You can then monitor your students’ progress from your ‘teacher screen’. Students and teacher can share and comment on each other’s creations.

When I introduce this tool (or any other presentation tool) to students I stress the importance of considering carefully all aspects of their multimedia inclusions (backgrounds, video, text, images ect.) on their glog. For example, I ask students how are the background, graphics, text boxes appropriate to the glog’s topic.

Alternatively, you can check out Blazoky’s video tutorial here (which is hosted by Glogster). (Please note: the number of student accounts with each teacher account is 50).

Challenge Task

Step 1. Register with GlogsterEDU or sign in (if you already have an account). If registering, make sure you sign up to the FREE Basic Teacher account and complete your details.

Step 2. Go to your Dashboard at the top of the page and start creating your own interactive glog on a topic of your own choice. Use the black tool box to start building you glog and try to incorporate a variety of media, including text, links, images, graphics, audio and video. I suggest starting your glog with choosing a wall (or theme, background) which can always be changed later. Then continue to build your glog and experiment with the variety of tools, layouts, media and fonts.
Save, name and categorise/tag your glog.

IMPORTANT: Save frequently. GlogsterEDU currently has NO autosave like some other Web 2.0 tools. If you want to navigate away from GlogsterEDU, you MUST save BEFORE moving away from the site, otherwise you will LOSE what was not previously saved.

Steps 4 & 5. Write a blog post that includes the digital poster, or ‘glog’ you have just created and share it with the rest of the participants in this Challenge. You will need to embed your glog into your blog and adjust the embed size. See Step 2: Embedding Media Into Blog Posts from the Kick Start Your Blogging Teacher Challenge Activity 6.

Step 6. Comment on the blog posts containing the glogs of 4 other participants in this GlogsterEDU Challenge.

Step 7. Discussion Question
In what ways could you, or teachers in your school, use GlogsterEDU in the classroom? Ideas could be specific tasks, subjects and/or year levels.
You might include this as your blog post for this task.

About the Author

I am Glenda Morris, a Teacher Librarian at OLMC, an all-girls secondary school, in Melbourne, Australia. My Groovy Librarian blog is a space where I reflect on my experiments with a range of Web 2.0 technologies and write about my continuing life-long learning journey as a Teacher Librarian. I love exploring the potential use of technology integration in classrooms to enhance student learning and to help teachers facilitate their teaching programs. I am committed to imparting my ICT knowledge and expertise to assist students to acquire the skills to be 21st Century learners. I also love reading (as any good Teacher Librarian would) particularly Supernatural stories.

You can check out my wiki Web2foryou which is a collection of Web 2.0 tools that I originally created for INF506 Social Networking for Information Professionals subject for my Masters of Education (Teacher Librarianship). This wiki will continually be updated with new tools (when time permits).

Does anyone know how to copy a glogster page. I would like to make a copy of my math help page and use it in my high school class. So I would have 2 similar one, one for the high school and on for the college.